Nicholas Emmanuel MARIAKIS: Climate change exists as one of the fundamental challenges facing the future of planet Earth.

While rising sea levels pose threats of catastrophic flooding, greenhouse gases and carbon dioxide pose threats to the planet’s supply of air. Additionally, acid rain, along with ozone depletion, are serious concerns, and this climate research and testing facility intends to help ameliorate the planet’s current path of environmental degradation.

Set in one of Mexico City’s major parks, the Bosque de Chapultepec, this project also aims to engender public use of both the landscape as well as the architecture itself. The tectonic formation of the project is predicated upon a methodological stacking logic of modular geometric units which grow to articulate the whole. Such expansion of the parts creates tumbled, multi-orientations—in both internal and external conditions—with the intention of cultivating spatial and tectonic variety (and complexity) in both plan as well as section. Channels, embedded in the modules, create linear arrays of fenestration. Nested within the internal volumes are five, glass, testing chambers, which proceed from a hierarchically arranged, central cluster of research and office spaces.